1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooling apparatus of a cooking appliance, such as an oven, and more particularly, to a cooling apparatus of a cooking appliance for cooling electric components in a cabinet and a door.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a partially exploded perspective view of a cooking appliance, particularly an oven, provided with a conventional cooling apparatus, and FIG. 2 is a sectional view of FIG. 1, taken along line A-A.
The oven as shown in FIG. 1 comprises a cabinet 1 having an opened front surface, a cooking chamber 2 installed in the cabinet 1 and heated such that food therein is cooked, a door 7 installed on the opened front surface of the cabinet 1 for opening and closing the cooking chamber 2, and an air blower 4 installed in an electric component chamber 3 located on the upper part of the cooking chamber 2 for cooling electric components in the cabinet 1.
The cooking chamber 2 is heated by an electric heater or a burner.
The air blower 4 serves to form a cooling channel due to a high temperature generated when the oven performs a cooking operation and an automatic cleaning operation using pyrolysis, and generally includes a fan 5 and a fan motor 6 for operating the fan 5.
The fan 5, as shown in FIG. 2, is installed at the rear part of the electric component chamber 3, and forcibly discharges air in the electric component chamber 3 toward the front part of the electric component chamber 3, at which the door 7 is placed, thereby cooling the air in the electric component chamber 3.
The door 7 is directly heated by heat radiated and heat convected from the inside of the cooking chamber 2, thus having a cooling structure. The cooling structure of the door 7 is configured such that a channel 9 for passing external air is formed between two glass plates 8 disposed in parallel.
The above channel 9 of the door 7 is connected to a discharge channel 1a of the fan 5.
Accordingly, when the air in the electric component chamber 3 is forcibly discharged by the fan 5, the hot current of air in the door 7 is exhausted to the outside and cooled by the principle of sucking the air passing through the door 7 according to Bernoulli's Equation using a difference of velocities of an exhausted air flow.
Here, various cooking appliances, such as an oven and a microwave oven, use a pyrolysis system for increasing the temperature of the cooking chamber 2, and cook foods in a state, in which the temperature of the cooking chamber 2 is more than 500° C., thereby requiring a cooling structure of the door 7 for coping with the above condition.
However, since the above-described conventional cooling structure of the cooking appliance is configured such that the air in the door 7 is sucked and discharged by means of a difference of velocities of the air discharged from the electric component chamber 3, in case that the quantity of the air current for cooling the door 7 is small and the blowing force of the fan 5 is deteriorated due to long-term use, the air discharged from the electric component chamber 3 flows again into the channel 9 of the door 7, thereby remarkably deteriorating the cooling capacity of the door 7.
Particularly, the above-described conventional cooling structure of the door is not suitable for cooking appliances, which perform an automatic cleaning operation using pyrolysis at a high temperature.